Elementary: Killer in a Coma; Killer is a Kid

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

Let me open by talking about the "theme song" for this show. When I saw the pilot, there was no opener attached. Now, I love it... I think that the music and the marbles and the process are cool. But I don't think it's re-watchable week after week, year after year. In fact, I was almost wary of it before it even finished playing for the first time. Kinda annoying. I'm also not thrilled with the fact that Lucy Liu seems to exist purely to have a second main character on the show... I mean, how often are we going to have to see her wasting her talent by doing stupid exercises while wearing white dresses? She doesn't add too much to the plot, Holmes rarely acknowledges her, and she doesn't really have anything going on her own, despite what was trying to be built in the pilot. I'll give this show another episode or two, but it's starting to become a major dud... and not just because it's so much like House that it's sickening!

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Elementary "While You Were Sleeping" (S01E02): Holmes gets a call to look at a fresh case, where he quickly figures out the crimes and who the thief was. He then works on figuring out how Yvette, a woman in a coma, could be near a murder scene. He deduces that she has a twin, Rebecca, but they're fraternal, so that's a dead end. A second murder occurs, and Holmes notes that both victims have the same genetic condition, and that they're siblings. [tricky!] They have a mystery father, so the search begins to figure out who he is. Holmes forces a lawyer to give them the information by threatening to expose his drug habit. [hahaha!] They find out that the dead siblings are half-siblings of the coma girl and her twin. The conscious girl explains that her father told them of the others on his deathbed. To figure out how it's all happening, Holmes claims that there's a third illegitimate child, which ends up revealing that Yvette's doctor was putting her in and out of a coma so that she could kill the people while having a great medical alibi. [freaky!] She was sleeping with her doctor, who wanted her to have access to all of the money. It also looks like Rebecca might have been next - otherwise, why would Yvette still be in a coma? [yeah... super freaky.]

Non-crime stuff: Holmes and Watson attend a meeting for addicts, but he hypnotizes himself to get through it, using the word "amygdala." Watson has dinner with a former lover, who has heard from her worried parents. [boring!] Watson suggests that Holmes return to playing the violin to help relieve stress. It's hard for him to decide to do so, but he does play one night. Also, we learn that it has been less than two weeks since Holmes was released from rehab, and that he wasn't honest with the police about where he's been. [but this problem seems to disappear in the third episode.]

Elementary "Child Predator" (S01E03): Seven times in seven years, a child has gone missing while balloons were found in his place. The bodies weren't always recovered, but Holmes has done the math and noticed that the abductor keeps the children alive longer when there's less media attention. [okay... but not doing television interviews is one thing. in the day and age of social media, there's no stopping the public from grieving on twitter if nowhere else!] Holmes figures out that the father wasn't out buying wine when the bottle in the fridge isn't from a local bodega - this leads them to the woman he went to see that night, who saw a speeding van. All she knows, however is that it was brown. [there's some deduction in there with snapped twigs, sirens, doubled items in the kitchen, and forwarded mail as well.] In the area, they find a car that was sideswiped by a brown vehicle that had been painted white and blue before that. A BOLO locates the van before long but the driver is the first kid who was abducted by "the balloon man." [whoa. that's surprising!]

Holmes gets the kid to say a few things, including that the guy comes home every morning with donuts. [so he has a night job. got it.] Holmes thinks that the guy finds victims through his jobs, and that he's currently a newspaper delivery man. They figure out who he is but when they go to find him they only locate some balloons and a USB drive that has a video of the guy, asking for the return of Adam, or he'll kill the new girl. Adam is now 19, misses his "dad," and is not allowed to talk to police. [creepy time!] Luckily, Holmes is exempt from that restriction, and he finds out that the kid feels bad for "assisting" in the other situations. He gives up the address, and the police find the balloon man with the girl. The guy kills himself, but Holmes realizes that Adam had the master bedroom, so he was in charge, manipulating his abductor for quite some time. The kid's brilliant and has executed many plans, so although Holmes beats himself up over this, he does realize that one of the victims was taken while the alleged Balloon Man was in traction, so that instance was all Adam - the immunity deal won't cover this, as that's for crimes "in consort with" Abbott. [wow. loopholes everywhere!]

Non-crime stuff: all Watson did this episode was try to get Holmes to sleep, eat, and exercise.